Europe – Pay Transparency Directive: preparing for the great unknown?
Over the last few months, we have done a lot of sessions with clients on the Pay Transparency Directive. Chief among the questions that inevitably comes up is implementation of the Directive in the different Member States. Clients wonder if and how they can prepare for June 2026 when – as per usual – most Member States are nowhere near presenting even draft legislation to translate the Directive into national legislation.
Our response to this entirely sensible question is always the same: while we will of course track local developments and keep you updated, please do not wait until there is more clarity from national legislators to take action on this topic. You don’t have to know about every nut and bolt of the finished product to know enough to start your preparation, especially as the Directive does set out very clear pointers on the likely direction of travel.
One of the main principles of the Directive is that Member States should take the necessary measures to ensure that “employers have pay structures ensuring equal pay for equal work or work of equal value”. These pay structures should be based on a job evaluation scheme which considers skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions (and, if appropriate, any other factors which are relevant to the specific job or position). There is no chance that those key indicators will be altered materially pre-implementation – while it is possible that some states may add further considerations, that will almost certainly be by way of illustration or expansion of those criteria, not variation of them. Making sure that the organisation has the right structures and schemes in place and determining the pay gaps in the organisation on this basis is a project that will likely take a couple of months, which does not leave an awful lot of time to remedy any gaps above 5% that would come out of the analysis.
And yes, the Directive does look to Member States to take the necessary measures to ensure that “analytical tools or methodologies are made available to support and guide the assessment and comparison of the value of work in accordance with the [above] criteria”. But in the current political climate, where even European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has announced a drive for de-regulation, we do not expect that the Member States will be demonstrating excessive zeal when implementing this provision. Rather we expect that those which are already quite advanced on this topic – e.g. Spain, which has a public on-line job evaluation tool – will maintain what’s already in place, whereas those less prepared Member States (which is the large majority) will likely leave it at the level of the principles set out by the Directive, without much more.
The first Member States that have issued draft legislation seem to confirm this prediction:
- Sweden’s existing legislation is already in line with the Directive’s requirements, requiring employers to conduct annual reviews of equal jobs and jobs of equal value. Under the existing legislation, companies with 10 or more employees must document the salary review in writing, including specific measures to address any identified pay gap issues, while companies with 25 or more employees must also produce annual equality plans. The draft legislation to transpose the Directive is in fact a set of amendments to existing legislation:
- As per the Directive, employers must provide information to job applicants about the initial salary or range for the position. Sweden adds the obligation to offer information on any relevant collective bargaining agreement provisions on salary. Answering a question we also get quite often, the Swedish draft Bill specifies that this information does not need to be included in the job postings but should be provided in reasonable time to allow for an informed negotiation on pay. In line with the Directive, employers cannot ask prior salary history.
- Employers must inform employees about the “standards and practices” for wages, to help employees understand the annual equal pay salary reviews being conducted.
- Also in line with the Directive, employees must have rights to information on their individual pay level and average pay levels for workers performing equal work, broken down by gender.
- Employers with 100 or more employees must report gender pay gaps during the calendar year for the overall workforce to the Equality Ombudsman, who will publish this information. Employers must also report to the Ombudsman pay gaps by groupings of employees performing equal work, explaining differences of 5% or more with objective reasons or actions to be taken.
- Finally, the annual equal pay salary analysis must also include a comparison between women’s and men’s pay progression in connection with parental leave and pay progression for employees who perform equal work or work of equal value, compared to employees who have not taken a corresponding period of leave. This provision goes beyond Directive requirements, which only ask that family leaves be considered as part of a joint pay assessment (the further analysis imposed if the annual pay gap report shows a pay gap of 5% upwards in any given category).
- Ireland’s draft bill is less ambitious (though all credit to them for at least having started) as it only entails a partial implementation of the Directive. The draft Bill has a wider scope than the transposition of the Directive and includes two provisions relating to pay transparency:
- It requires employers to provide information about salary levels or ranges in the job advertisement. This requirement is slightly more restrictive than the Directive, which does not state that this information must be published (already) in the job advert. It is not clear in this stage exactly how detailed the information on pay range will need to be.
- In line with the Directive, the second measure prohibits employers from asking job applicants about their own pay history or their current rate of pay.
- In Poland, quite interestingly, Members of Parliament presented in December 2024 their own draft Bill, not waiting for the results from the governmental working group tasked with preparation for the implementing law. In February, the Polish Parliament (by a scarce majority of votes of 229 to 201 and against the majority of Ministries and institutions which commented upon on the draft Bill) decided to proceed with this draft while the other is in the early preparatory stages. The current draft focuses on implementing only parts of the Directive focused on:
- pay transparency: salaries and salary levels will not be confidential (no exceptions), and employees will have the right to request information on their individual salary levels and average salary levels; employer will not be able to prohibit or prevent an employee from disclosing information about their salary (not even if such disclosure may hurt business interest and is not necessarily focused on ensuring equal pay),
- pay transparency in recruitment: the employer, publishing information on an open job position, shall identify the proposed level of salary, indicating its minimum and maximum amount; similarly to Ireland, the employer is required to publish salary proposals in the “information on possibility to hire an employee on a specific job position” (which we understand to mean the job advertisement), and there is no flexibility as to how and when this information is to be provided to the candidate.
- pay progression information: employer shall provide the employee with access to the criteria used to determine employee salary and pay progression; such criteria must be objective and gender-neutral; the draft Bill suggests that employers with fewer than 50 employees “may be released from this obligation”. It is not, however, clear by whom.
- new penalties will be imposed on employers in Poland for not informing employees of their salary level when requested, for not publishing information on salary in job advertisements and for employing an employee at a salary lower than stipulated in the job posting. This raises a number of questions, e.g. what if the salary is lower because the parties agreed to proceed with a part-time employment or to a reduction in scope of responsibilities? Will this still be a punishable offence?
The draft Bill is rather short and it does not touch upon sensitive topics such as job evaluation, objective or gender-neutral criteria for differentiation of salaries, or gender pay gap reporting. These matters are expected to be comprehensively regulated only in the governmental Bill, which is still a “work in progress” and not expected any time soon. It is fair to say that no guidance may be taken from the draft Bill as proposed, and at places it is actually quite confusing.
- Finally, in Germany, the interim Minister for Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, Lisa Paus, has apparently announced in a private meeting a couple of months ago that Germany will likely go for continued flexibility in setting categories of workers without imposed pay evaluation systems. Germany will also focus heavily on the Right to Information, which already exists but will be strengthened in the framework of the transposition process. This information is however not yet confirmed on the interim Minister’s website. At the moment, it is unclear whether this approach will be continued because the Green Party, of the which the interim Minister is a member, will no longer form part of the new government. It is uncertain what the priorities of the new government will be when implementing the Directive. We will keep you updated.
In summary, only four Member States have allowed us a view into their thinking on Pay Transparency Directive implementation, but in none of the four cases is the output of such a nature that it should prevent companies from making a start on the biggest chunk of the work, around fair job evaluation and the assessment and analysis of the gaps as they present themselves on the basis of such job evaluation. The time is now, more than ever.
March 28, 2025 at 03:28PM
Europe – Pay Transparency Directive: preparing for the great unknown?
Marga Caproni, Laura Sparschuh and Malgorzata Grzelak